Bob Menendez — again — appeals conviction in bribery scheme

by Dana DiFilippo, New Jersey Monitor
February 14, 2025

Former Sen. Bob Menendez wants a federal appeals court to overturn his conviction and sentence in a global bribery scheme.

Menendez attorneys filed a notice of appeal Thursday, four months before the disgraced longtime Democrat is expected to report to federal prison to begin serving 11 years behind bars.

The appeal is no surprise.

Menendez has denied wrongdoing and appealed every step of the way. Federal Judge Sidney H. Stein shot down two prior appeals — one his attorneys filed a month after his July conviction and another filed in November after prosecutors revealed they mistakenly uploaded insufficiently redacted documents to a laptop jurors used during deliberations.

He also vowed he would appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court after his sentencing last month, when he blasted the Southern District of New York, where the case was brought, as “the Wild West of political prosecutions.”

Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, two of Menendez’s co-defendants, were ordered to report to prison in April.

But Stein gave Menendez a longer reprieve, to June 6, so that he could attend the trial of his wife, Nadine, who prosecutors say acted as the go-between for more than $900,000 in bribes that Hana, Daibes, and co-defendant Jose Uribe gave the couple in exchange for Menendez’s influence. Uribe already pleaded guilty in a cooperation deal.

The trial for Nadine Menendez, whose proceedings have been repeatedly postponed to accommodate her medical treatment for breast cancer, is now set for March 18, with a pretrial conference on Wednesday in Manhattan.

Over nine weeks of testimony last spring and summer, prosecutors showed how Hana and Daibes showered Menendez and his wife with cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, exercise equipment, paychecks for a fake job for Nadine Menendez, and more in exchange for the ex-senator exerting his influence to benefit their business interests and the governments of Egypt and Qatar, as well as derail various criminal probes and prosecutions.

To hold up his end of the corrupt deals, Menendez promised to influence national security including the release of U.S. military arms and aid, divulged sensitive information to Egypt that risked the safety of employees at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, pressured U.S. agriculture officials to ignore the halal meat-exporting monopoly he helped Hana secure in Egypt, and tried to disrupt multiple felony criminal proceedings, including by influencing the selection of U.S. attorney for New Jersey.

Menendez had pleaded not guilty to bribery, honest services fraud, extortion, conspiracy, acting as a foreign agent, and obstruction. But a jury found him guilty last summer after three days of deliberations.

Menendez, who was head of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he was indicted in September 2023, resigned in August.

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